Skype recently launched skySpace, the only media-centric social networking software. skySpace will multiply the volume and quality of information shared among Skype's 136 million users, creating a new market category.

skySpace empowers Skype users to tell stories by sharing their photos, video, audio, and documents via their skySpace homepage-either privately or to the community at large. Users personalize their skySpace homepage with backgrounds, images, layouts, borders, and fonts-eliciting a torrent of conversations from anyone who visits their home. skySpace users are rewarded with feedback on the number of visitors and their identities.

Skype's parent company eBay sees the synergy, "Skype's most interesting capability is the application to application messaging, which enables a new class of distributed software like the skySpace peer-to-peer browser" said Distinguished Engineer Adrian Cockroft of the eBay Research Labs.

skySpace is the brainchild of Argentina-born Pablo Bertorello, who affirms "skySpace is the first social network for Skype, christening new business models around user-generated content: artistic personalization, original products, and third-party add-ons like printing, fax, and backup." Skype, having Certified skySpace, now distributes it as Premium softwa re, "skySpace is an interesting application that can power user adoption, usage, and revenue. I am really looking forward to seeing how users take advantage of 'Extras' such as skySpace," stated the Director of Skype's software partnership initiative, Paul Amery.

"This is a brilliant play by Skype," said Bill Campbell, Technical Editor of the Skype Journal.